Talk:Streetcar suburb

Banned Buses in Prague
I'm sorry but Buses aren't banned in Prague's historical center. They just aren't needed becaus of Tramways and Subways serving the city with interchange stations for the bus feeders lines. It is a deep misunderstanding of how European Citys do function.89.16.151.85 (talk) 03:24, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Bicycles vs. Streetcar tracks
Turn of the century bicycles had much larger tires than today's do, roughly the size of those on modern mountain bikes (minus the knobs). This was to absorb the bumps of rougher (and in some cases, non-existent) road surfaces. I'd imagine it made trolly tracks less of a hassle, though still probably something to be wary of. --Cosmo the third 15:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Toronto still has streetcars, and the tracks are a well-known hazard to cyclists - from time to time, I've had bruises to prove this. The best way of dealing with them is to cross at as much of a right angle as possible. Streetcars and bikes can co-exist well enough. --Gigantichound 17:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much bikes were used for transporation during the streetcar suburb era. From my understanding they were mostly recreational - ridden to the emerging parks of the era, which of course didn't have streetcar tracks. --W.marsh 21:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The bicycle was the primary means of personal transport from the invention of the "safety bike" (i.e. bikes that look like modern ones and not penny-farthings) to the widespread adoption of cars. This was of course a different point in time depending on the place. In the US, the car began taking over already before World War I (though the Great Depression and World War II somewhat delayed the inevitable) whereas in Europe cars did not really make an impact until late into the 1920s and were still far from common in the 1950s. Copenhagen had more cyclists in the 1930s than in the 1970s for instance. And as a cyclist in a city with an extensive streetcar network (riding a vintage racing bike no less) I can attest that open eyes and crossing the tracks at an angle does the trick. Now the city not doing their job in clearing snow from the cycle routes, that's much more of a problem, if you ask me. Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:31, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Sweeping generalizations
The development of communities like Jamaica Plain, Boston Massachusetts prove the exception to many of the "rules" stated in this article. There is certainly no grid layout to the roads - the community goes back to the 1630s. The article needs some tuning up to account for this classic "streetcar suburb". MarkinBoston 04:23, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Electric streetcars were extended into older communities, sure. But when this article describes "streetcar suburbs" it describes suburbs that were built in the era where electric streetcars were a major means of transportation, as in, the roads were mostly laid out then and developers came in and built most of the houses at that time. It did tend to result in a lot of the same sort of developments. To put it another way, I'm sure cars drive into Jamaica Plain now - that doesn't mean what's true of automobile suburb design is going to be true of Jamaica Plain. If you have any sources though, on Jamaica Plain being what's considered a streetcar suburb, and how that clashes with the general definition in this article, that would be interesting. --W.marsh 13:43, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

The controversy
For some reason the only part of this article people seem to care about is the list of examples... and that's kind of sad because the article is good aside from that section but still needs improvement. It's the best prose summary of streetcar suburbs I've ever seen on the internet, so there's that. Anyway, I was just annoyed with the edit summary someone used: "these have been tagged for a year -- please do not add entries back until they have been sourced, otherwise a clear violation of WP:V" It's not a clear violation of WP:V, WP:V only requires inline sources for claims that are "challenged or likely to be challenged" - I've observed no one questioning that these places really are streetcar suburbs, so it seems like we're requiring sources just to make people dance, sources apparently wouldn't actually improve the accuracy of the article.

That said, I'd rather have no section than the current one, which just gives one city, and is hopelessly ugly doing to have a citation after every sentence, it makes it utterly unreadable.

So if you guys aren't going to work on the non-list part of the article, can we at least discuss rather than revert war? --Rividian (talk) 23:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It has long bothered me that much of this listing was unsourced. At one point I had checked all of the items & their respective articles, where they were sourced as being streetcar suburbs; but since then I've also gotten the impression that many unverified items had been added to the list.  I agree that the current format is hideous: a list is far better & can maintain footnote references.  I'd recommend we return to the format we had prior to the revert war, albeit each one should be individually sourced regardless of whether or not it has a separate article. -- Bossi  ( talk • gallery • contrib ) 23:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd rather the section be prose than a list, personally. "Example farms" rather annoy me... they quickly become not attempts to list a few representative examples, but to list every known instance of something, which is pointless to readers who don't happen to live in a certain city. The section could give examples of streetcar suburbs that have been the subject of academic study, like Somerville Mass., and pick ones from the various regions and countries so there's a bit there for everyone. And yes if we did it this way could add those precious little inline citations :-) --Rividian (talk) 23:17, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * What about both? List the more critical ones here, but spin off a more comprehensive list to its own article? -- Bossi  ( talk • gallery • contrib ) 23:41, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, a separate article could be done... but a category might be more appropriate. Anyway, I added an illustration of what I'm talking about to the article... if nothing else I think it looks better than some of the intermediate versions that have been there. I've removed the "source required" claim, because that's not what WP:V says, per my initial comment here. If you challenge any claim, by all means, remove it... but we've got better things to do than source millions of claims that no one doubts are true. --Rividian (talk) 23:52, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Why People like Streetcar suburbs
Thank you for this article. The reason that people like these suburbs is that the streetcars generated suburbs that cannot be duplicated by the New Urban architecture movement planners or found elsewhere. Suburbs that yielded close neighbors and close friendships. Front yards were often not simply filled with plants, but with lawn games to spend time with neighbors building friendships.

Some may damn the above as a glittering generality, but those who do have not actually lived in a streetcar neighborhood, and so do not know what it does for people. All that they know are the strip malls and parking lot wastelands generated by the automobile and the lonliness and drug abuse that follow. Rumjal rumjal 12:42, 17 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rumjal (talk • contribs)

Mpls. not mentioned here
Mpls. is not sited in this article. 2601:445:8480:BBE0:2CC5:EE73:F2AB:14C9 (talk) 00:58, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

San Francisco
It seems strange that San Francisco is not on the Examples list. Just about every neighborhood in San Francisco was originally a streetcar suburb. See https://sfstreetcars.co/ --Westwind273 (talk) 19:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)